Maphead: Ken Jennings Finds the World’s Lowest Highest Point

All countries have a high point and a low point, elevationally speaking, but “high” and “low” can be very relative terms. But the Maldives have the lowest highest point—that is, the least impressive national high point in the world.

All countries have a high point and a low point, elevationally speaking, but “high” and “low” can be very relative terms. The lowest point of hilly Uganda, for example, would still tower four hundred feet above Cathedral Hill, the highest point of low-lying Uruguay. What country do you think has the lowest highest point—that is, the least impressive national high point in the world? Even the famously flat Netherlands has its summit at Vaalserberg, a 1,050-foot hill near the German border. To find out how low you can really go, you’d have to journey to the Republic of Maldives, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, none of whose 1,100 islands rise more than two meters above sea level.

The highest point in the entire nation of the Maldives is a gentle, coconut palm–covered rise on the island of Villingili, just seven or eight feet higher than the waves lapping on the beach nearby. Less than a mile long, Villingili is part of the Addu Atoll, the Maldives’ southernmost point, and sits less than fifty miles south of the Equator.

The island was uninhabited for many years, but after a decade of false starts, marked by government corruption and financial setbacks, a luxury resort was finally opened on the island in 2009, a series of cabins built on stilts over the island’s turquoise lagoon. Now you too can make the exhausting hike to the nation’s highest point—roughly the height of retired NBA star Yao Ming.

As you can imagine, a nation with 80 percent of its land area less than a meter above sea level is more than a little concerned about the specter of climate change. If sea levels rise 23 inches by the year 2100, as a 2009 panel predicted, nearly all of the inhabited parts of the Maldives will be underwater. The nation’s last president, Mohammed Nasheed, became an activist on the subject, pledging to make the Maldives carbon-neutral by 2020—but also looking for backup sites in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia, should_ _the entire nation have to relocate. But Nasheed was deposed in a coup earlier this year, and the status of his reforms is uncertain. (Read our interview with Nasheed here.)

If the Maldives has the world’s lowest highest point, what country do you think has the world’s highest lowest point? Himalayan Nepal? Alpine Switzerland? In fact, the surprising answer is the African nation of Lesotho. Lesotho is a small, mountainous enclave surrounded on all sides by South Africa, and it’s the only country in the world that sits entirely above 1,000 meters of elevation. The junction of the Orange and Makhaleng rivers is almost a mile above sea level—and that’s the country’s lowest point.

Explore the world's oddities every week on CondeNastTraveler.com with Ken Jennings. Check out his latest book, Maphead__.